Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/57

 the candid confession of the opponents of ideals, who complain that it is a far more disagreeable business to learn names and dates than to rise into this empty (as it appears to them) world of ideas; but who would themselves, it seems, if they might indulge, rather do the latter than the former. In place of this natural freedom from care there appears anxiety, in which tomorrow’s hunger and all possible future states of hunger in their whole long series hang over even him who is satiated, as the one thing that occupies his mind and evermore goads and drives him on. In our age this is caused artificially, in the boy by the repression of his natural freedom from care, in the man by the endeavour to be considered prudent, a reputation which falls to the lot only of him who does not lose sight of that point of view for a moment. This, then, is not the natural disposition with which we should have to reckon, but a corruption imposed by force on reluctant nature, which vanishes when that force is no longer applied.

21. This education, which stimulates directly the mental activity of the pupil, produces knowledge, we said above. This gives us the opportunity of distinguishing still more clearly the new education from the old. The new education, in fact, aims especially and directly only at stimulating regular and progressive mental activity. Knowledge, as we saw above, results only incidentally and as an inevitable consequence. Now, if it is only in such knowledge that our pupil can conceive the image of real life which shall stimulate him to serious activity when he becomes a man, knowledge is certainly an important part of the training which is to be obtained. Yet it cannot be said that the new education aims directly at such knowledge; knowledge is only incidental to it. On the other hand, the old education aimed definitely